For the most part it was "green one" and in a spirit of
sympathetic interest. It hurt me, all the same. Even those glances
that offered me a cordial welcome and good wishes had
something self-complacent and condescending in them. "Poor
fellow! he is a green one," these people seemed to say. "We are
not, of course. We are Americanized."
For my first meal in the New World I bought a three-cent wedge of
coarse rye bread, off a huge round loaf, on a stand on Essex
Street. I was too strict in my religious observances to eat it
without first performing ablutions and offering a brief prayer. So I
approached a bewigged old woman who stood in the doorway of a
small grocery-store to let me wash my hands and eat my meal in
her place. She looked old-fashioned enough, yet when she heard
my request she said, with a laugh: "You're a green one, I see."
"Suppose I am," I resented. "Do the yellow ones or black ones all
eat without washing? Can't a fellow be a good Jew in America?"
"Yes, of course he can, but--well, wait till you see for yourself.
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